Wednesday came clear.
The rain had moved on overnight — the way Jakarta rain always did, without announcement, leaving behind it the particular washed quality of a city that had been cleaned against its will and was now gleaming slightly more than it intended to. The streets were still damp at seven in the morning. By eight they were drying. By nine they would be gone entirely, absorbed back into the heat and noise that was the city's natural state.
Hana noticed this from the window of the car that took her to work on days when the traffic made the commute a calculation rather than a certainty. Today was one of those days — the rain had cleared but the residual congestion of a wet Jakarta morning was still working its way through the arterial roads, and she sat in the back seat watching
